(Dr. Steven Dickerson, advisor)

"USB Remote Machine Controller"

Abstract

Even robots with little complexity can contain many electronic components that are dispersed throughout the machine.  This requires the use of a large number of wires, which results in a prominent source of failures.  This thesis describes the design of a remote axis controller that would help to reduce the number of wires needed to control a robot.  A microcontroller would be placed at each axis of the robot and would communicate with the robot's host computer using the Universal Serial Bus (USB).  The proposed bus allows ``daisy chaining'', requiring only one twisted pair of wires for communication between the host computer and all axis controllers.  Each controller will have the I/O capabilities necessary to be a robust, generic axis controller.  A typical axis controller requires an encoder, accelerometer, machine vision input, output for motor control, and parallel I/O for discrete on/off activities.

This thesis details the hardware and software design process used to design a remote axis serial interface device (RASID).  Hardware was selected to build a complete RASID.  In addition, an emulation was developed to provide proof-of-concept for the USB based RASID.